Farm tour offers glimpse inside food production

Emily Graves walked up to the closed metal gate and, looking between its bars, said hello to the cow staring back at her.

“What does the cow say?” Fluvanna County resident Pam Graves said to her 2-year-old daughter, who quickly replied, “Moooooo.”

“Even where we live … you don’t see those things every day,” said Graves, who was walking around Innisfree Village in Albemarle County as a part of the Meet Yer Eats farm tour.

Residents could choose among 18 area farms to visit in Monday’s second annual tour. Sponsored by Market Central and Whole Foods Market, the idea behind Meet Yer Eats is to get people closer to the origins of their food.

The growers showcased during the event participate in Charlottesville’s City Market, held on Saturday mornings from April through mid-November. The number of farms increased dramatically from last year, when five were a part of the tour.

“I’m excited that we had all these farms participating,” said Kathy Kildea, the Market Central tour coordinator who visited three farms over the course of the day. “We’d like to continue the tradition. I think people are ready for this kind of thing.”

Besides having several gardens, a woodshop, bakery and weavery, Innisfree is also home to adults who have intellectual disabilities. Residents work on the farm, and many of them were out Monday harvesting produce for the farm’s community-supported agriculture program, washing eggs and sanding cutting boards by hand in the woodshop.

“I’m really interested in combining social work and gardening or farming,” said Charlottesville resident Katie Geisshuesler, who participated in a guided tour of Innisfree to see how village residents were involved with the farm’s daily tasks.

Three guided tours took place on the 550-acre farm on Monday. Kildea said the proceeds from the entire event will go toward building a permanent home for the City Market.

Graves does not garden, but she did Meet Yer Eats for the first time this year because she thought it would be a fun family activity.

“It’s more of a hands-on thing, and the kids get so excited,” she said.

At Grubby Girl/Meeting House Farm in Louisa County, 8-year-old Isabelle Schrock excitedly sniffed honeycombs from which the syrupy liquid had just been extracted.

“It smells sweet,” she said. “It smells like fresh honey.”

Schrock was with her parents and had just observed an extracting demonstration. Sonja Schrock, Isabelle’s mom, said they were new to the Charlottesville area and wanted to tour some of the farms whose products they had eaten, such as goat cheese from Caromont Farm.

“It’s kind of neat to see where it’s coming from,” she said.

More than 30 people had gathered around Grubby Girl owner Amanda Welch during her 11 a.m. demonstration. Welch said she decided to participate in the tour this year because City Market-goers always ask her questions about her bees.

“I was amazed how many people showed up,” she said of her first extracting display. The nine honeycomb frames that fit into the metal contraption yield 30 pounds of honey, Welch said.

Sadly, she said, “I’m out of honey for the year.”